I have written before about the power of mantra, visualization, and the camaraderie we find in the sangha. All of these resources are more important now than ever, but I also wish to underscore the vitality of love, humor, and joy. Thich Nhat Hanh, known to his followers as Thay, was a major proponent of Buddhism in action and an advocate for love—expansive love. Love is something that we give and that we enact; love is a verb. Love is hardest to enact toward those people or events we fear, despise, or do not understand. Therefore, it is even more powerful when we can do so and do so bravely.

I have been reading quotes from Thay’s book Teachings on Love to my parent meditation group. These folks want to talk about parenting, the highs and lows, and especially the unknowns. No one receives a handbook on how to parent and none of us receives a guidebook on how to be human or how to navigate this human journey interpersonally. It is challenging enough to work with our inner voices, emotions, and psyche, let alone the myriad outer relationships that are central to our karmic path.

As Thay expressed:

Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha are three precious jewels in Buddhism, and the most important of these is Sangha. The Sangha contains the Buddha and the Dharma. A good teacher is important, but sisters and brothers in the practice are the main ingredient for success. You cannot achieve enlightenment by locking yourself in your room. Transformation is possible only when you are in touch. When you touch the ground, you can feel the stability of the earth and feel confident. (Mountain Sangha)

What we often do not want to face as practitioners is that all humans and sentient beings are our sangha, whether or not we like them or choose them. In the West, we have so much privilege and possibility in general. It is not until we face real hardship or uncertainty that we may suddenly realize that we have to employ the tools of meditation, tonglen, or simply giving the benefit of the doubt to others. It is so much easier for us to go by assumption or by the confirmation bias that everything will go our way.

But particularly because I work with children and their families, I’ve known for many decades that no matter how well we lay out our plans, life unfolds in the way our karmic paths dictate. Even as Buddhists or meditators, we must renew our vows and commitments daily and even moment to moment. This includes renewing our vows and commitments to practice for the benefit of all sentient beings, whether we know them, like them, or agree with them. It is particularly poignant at this moment in time to work with children who are themselves the receptacles of the generalized fear, ignorance, and emotional disturbances of the adults in their communities.

For young people, the kind of rapid changes happening in our world politically, technologically, and even within their educational systems affect their lives greatly. Yet they do not have much agency to effect change. One thing I try to do as an educator is to elicit from students their own inspiration and ideas. Ideas for action, because no one is too young to engage in positive action for the befit of their own communities. Many years ago, when the first Women’s March took place in Washington, DC, and in other big cities around the country and the world, I was able to attend this march with my very young nephew in Denver. I believe he was 2-1/2 years old, and even at that age he was able to absorb the positivity and empowering actions of adults. There were also children who spoke at the march—children as young as 10 and 11, who spoke about their wishes and desires for a better world. It is these children who give me the most motivation to continue as an educator and who bring me inspiration as a human being to give to my community.

We must support our youth so that they may have a brighter future. For this and other reasons I continue to lead short, simple meditations for students of all ages and their families to cultivate a baseline of strength and stability for the unexpected arisings in their lives. I wish for them to cultivate an inner sense of freedom and agency to be empowered in this world that they are inheriting. Then they have the tools to accept and improve it, and make it their own in ways that benefit the planet and the human and beyond-human communities.

Meditation is the practice of looking deeply into the nature of your suffering and your joy. Through the energy of mindfulness, through concentration, and by looking deeply into the nature of our suffering, we can see the deep causes of our suffering. If you can keep mindfulness and concentration alive, then looking deeply will reveal to you the true nature of your pain. And freedom can arise from your sustained deep vision into the nature of your pain. Solidity, freedom, calm, and joy are the fruits of meditation.*

We may feel as though we are heading into a long winter of unknowns, confusion, or strife, but we have the power to harness our inner resolve toward a better future. It begins with a clear perception of the present and the only thing over which we have any hope of control: our own minds. May we use meditation, speech, and thoughtful action to effect the change we need, as well as appreciate what is working well, starting with our own health, stability, and the gem that is the sangha, young and old alike.

* Thich Nhat Hanh on True Love and the Five Rivers of Self-Knowledge (The Marginalia)

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